Lando Calrissian Wanted to Buy Ben Solo a Cape When He Was a Kid

An innocent birthday present from Lando Calrissian may have lead Ben Solo on the path to wearing capes, which everyone knows is a gateway fashion choice that leads the Dark side.

Over on io9/Gizmodo, a new excerpt from the forthcoming novel Star Wars novel Aftermath: Empire’s End, Lando is thinking really hard about getting a present for Han and Leia’s son, Ben. Lando is hanging out with Lobot who reminds him he still needs to get a present for Han and Leia’s wedding. But Lando is all about getting a gift for Ben, saying, “Okay, okay. Buying gifts for a kid. Can we get him a cute little cape and a mustache so he looks like old Uncle Lando?”

If Lando did in fact give Ben Solo a cape for one of his very first birthdays, could the cape have had an adverse effect? In The Force Awakens, we learned Kylo Ren/Ben Solo has an obsession with Darth Vader, one of the most frightening cape-wearers of all time.

As it stands, Lando is pretty much the only good guy who wears a full-on cape in Star Wars. Sure, Jedi Knights wear robes, and Biggs wore a cape in a deleted scene from A New Hope, but the only canonical good guy who rocks a cape is Lando Calrissian. And if he gifted Ben Solo a cape at a young age, could this have come with some some mixed messages about sartorial direction and becoming a Dark side dictator? To be fair, Lando probably didn’t give Ben the cape, but readers will probably have to get the book to find out for sure.